Egypt will embrace non-Muslims, women -Morsi
US: The rights of non-Muslims and women are safe in Egypt, Prime
Minister Mohamed Morsi said Tuesday, repeatedly telling a US audience
that the newly democratic country will remain a secular state.
“All Egyptians represent the majority, all Egyptians -- men, women,
Muslims, and Christians... regardless of their beliefs, their gender,
their color,” Morsi said at the Clinton Global Initiative forum in New
York.
Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood movement who was elected
following Egypt’s revolution against US-backed strongman Hosni Mubarak,
told the forum led by former president Bill Clinton that Egypt will
remain pluralistic and secular.
“We have really a new democratic state and a new real civilian state
in Egypt: non-theocratic, not military,” he said.
Morsi dismissed worries by some outside Egypt that civil and
religious rights, including for the Coptic Christian minority, are
likely to decline with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. He said the
real problem in Egypt was Mubarak-era corruption. “We don’t have a real
problem in terms of the rights of women,” he said. “However, the
corruption is something everybody suffered from.”
AFP
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